Nature of Deity

Who Is the Father?

The question “Who is God?” has echoed through the ages. Believers in every tradition have sought to know the nature of their Creator — yet perhaps no doctrine has been more deliberately obscured than the identity of God the Father.

The ancient and scholarly witness for the Father’s identity includes the Hebrew evidence preserved in the earliest layers of scripture, the testimony of the New Testament, and the convergent findings of mainstream biblical scholarship. The doctrinal exposition itself — what President Brigham Young taught about Adam being the Father — is treated on the Adam-God page, with the framework that distinguishes the divine quorums treated on the Two Trinities page. What follows is the supporting evidence from Hebrew scripture and ancient sources.

The Ancient Evidence: What Mainstream Scholarship Reveals

One of the most remarkable confirmations of the Father’s identity comes not from Latter-day Saint sources, but from secular biblical scholarship. As articulated by Fred C. Collier, the earliest Hebrews worshipped a deity named El, and multiple independent scholarly sources identify El as Father Adam.

In New Light on the Ancient Hebrew/Christian Doctrine on Deity, Part 1 (1991), Collier marshals evidence from the Ugaritic tablets, the New Testament, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, academic encyclopedias, and much more. The work demonstrates the utter falsity of Walter Martin’s anti-Adam-God polemics and of all like polemics against the doctrine by modern critics.

These independent witnesses — produced by scholars with no connection to the Restoration — converge upon a single conclusion: the God of the ancient Hebrews was a Father, embodied and personal, and the earliest layers of biblical tradition preserve the memory of His name and His office. When archaeology, philology, and revealed prophecy align, the combined witness demands serious attention.

The Divine Couple: El and Asherah

The ancient evidence reveals a further suppressed truth: God the Father was not alone. The earliest Hebrews worshipped El alongside His consort, Asherah — the Divine Mother.

In The Demise of the Hebrew Goddess (1991), Collier documents how El and Asherah were worshipped together in Solomon’s Temple for centuries.1 The sacred symbols were simple yet profound:

  • A stone pillar (Hebrew: massebah) representing El — masculine, enduring, foundational
  • A wooden pole or living tree (Hebrew: asherah) representing the Divine Mother — feminine, life-giving, nurturing

These were not idle pagan corruptions. They stood in the temple built by divine command, representing the eternal truth that exaltation requires both Father and Mother, united in Celestial Marriage.

The worship of the Divine Mother was not removed all at once. The corruption of true worship had begun far earlier — tracing back to the apostasy of Israel in the wilderness under Moses (the Golden Calf episode and its aftermath), through which the Fulness of the Patriarchal Priesthood was withdrawn from the camp of Israel.2 Subsequent attempts to recover or maintain the worship of the Mother became progressively corrupted in the popular religion of Israel and Judah, and a series of reformers — Hezekiah, Josiah, and the later priestly editors — eventually purged the public veneration of Asherah from official Israelite religion. The interpretation of those reform episodes is debated among biblical scholars and Latter-day Saint apologists today, and that debate is beyond the scope of this page; what is not in dispute is that the archaeological and textual evidence remains, testifying that our earliest spiritual ancestors knew what modern revelation has restored: that we have a Mother in Heaven as well as a Father, and that She is identified by the early luminaries of the Restoration as our Mother Eve. (See Heavenly Mother for the full witness, and Article 15 of Fred’s Articles of Faith of the Church of the Firstborn.)

Two Gods in the Old Testament

A careful reading of the Hebrew Bible reveals what scholars call the “two powers in heaven” tradition: two divine beings, both spoken of with titles of Deity, yet distinct from one another.

In The Father and the Son — The Two Gods of the Old Testament (1995), Fred C. Collier traces the identity of the Father God — called El Shaddai3 — through the entire patriarchal line:

  • Abraham covenanted with El Shaddai (Genesis 17:1)
  • Isaac was blessed by El Shaddai (Genesis 28:3)
  • Jacob received his name Israel from El Shaddai (Genesis 35:11)
  • Joseph was blessed by “the God of thy father” (Genesis 49:25)

The central thesis of The Two Gods of the Old Testament is that both the Father (El / El Shaddai / Elohim) and the Son (the pre-mortal Christ, who appears throughout the Old Testament as “the Angel of Yahweh”) bear the name Yahweh. The apparent conflict in scholarship over whether “Yahweh” refers to Father or Son is resolved not by choosing one over the other, but by recognizing that both are Yahweh — the Father by inherent right, and the Son by authorized delegation, in fulfillment of the Lord’s own declaration regarding the messenger sent before Israel: “my name is in him” (Exodus 23:21). This is the principle the modern Latter-day Saint tradition calls Divine Investiture — the Son acting and speaking in the Father’s name and bearing the Father’s authority and titles.4

The essay clarifies the pre-existent role of Jesus Christ as the God of Israel after God the Father stopped dealing with that nation directly — a transition that occurred under Moses, following the apostasy of the camp of Israel5 — and conclusively settles the question of how and why Christ the Son is at times identified as Yahweh in scripture, notwithstanding that the title applies to both the Father and the Son.

This last point is critical. In what the Restoration calls the Creation Trinity — Elohim, Yahovah, and Michael, the three “distinct characters” who organized this earth (President Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:51) — Yahovah, in this context, refers to Michael’s Father, not to Christ. Yahovah/Jehovah can refer to Christ in certain scriptural contexts because of the Name-Title System (titles inherited across the divine family hierarchy); it can also at times refer to Michael/Adam Himself, when the context indicates that referent. The Creation Trinity and the Godhead Trinity are two distinct quorums, not the same persons. The full development of this framework can be found on the dedicated Two Trinities page.

Genesis 18: A Resurrected Body

One of the most compelling proofs that the Father already possessed a resurrected body appears in Genesis 18 — the theophany at Mamre, where three heavenly beings appeared to Abraham:

“And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.”
— Genesis 18:8 (KJV)

The text is explicit. These divine visitors had their feet washed (verse 4), ate food — butter, milk, meat (verse 8) — and rested under a tree (verse 4). Compare this with the appearances of the pre-mortal Christ:

  • Judges 6 — The angel of the Lord appears to Gideon. When Gideon prepares food, the angel does not eat. Instead, fire consumes the offering, and the angel vanishes.
  • Judges 13 — The angel of the Lord appears to Manoah. When Manoah offers food, the angel refuses: “I will not eat of thy bread” (verse 16). Again, fire consumes the sacrifice and the angel ascends in the flame.

The pattern is unmistakable: pre-mortal spirits cannot eat physical food, yet the divine visitors at Mamre ate, drank, and rested. This proves that God the Father (El Shaddai) already possessed His glorified, resurrected body during the days of Abraham — which means He had already passed through mortality. This diagnostic principle is one of several converging evidences laid out at length in The Father and the Son — The Two Gods of the Old Testament (alongside Genesis 18’s broader theophany pattern, the failure of pre-mortal Christ to eat in pre-incarnation appearances, and the character of the post-resurrection Christ in Luke 24:36–43, who explicitly distinguishes Himself from a “spirit” by eating fish before His disciples).

Proverbs 30:4 — Father and Son in the Wisdom Literature

One compact Old Testament witness to the Father and Son as two distinct beings appears in Proverbs:

“Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?“
— Proverbs 30:4 (KJV)

The writer of Proverbs presupposes that the Creator God has a Son with a name. The Father-Son distinction is not a New Testament innovation. It is an ancient Hebrew reality preserved in the wisdom literature itself.

The Biblical Witness: Adam Is the Lord from Heaven

The New Testament provides direct testimony that Adam holds a divine office. In Adam-God in the Bible (written in 1978 as a response to Walter Martin and published in Doctrine of the Priesthood in February 2014), Fred C. Collier demonstrates how the scriptures explicitly identify Adam as “the Lord from Heaven.”

1 Corinthians 15:47 — Paul’s Testimony

“The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.“
— 1 Corinthians 15:47 (KJV)

Paul’s language is unambiguous. He contrasts:

  • The first man (Adam) — of the earth, mortal, earthy
  • The second man (Adam) — the Lord from heaven, glorified, celestial

Paul does not say “the second man is Christ.” He says “the second man is the Lord from heaven.” This is Adam in His exalted state — the same being who once walked Eden’s garden, now crowned with glory as the Ancient of Days. Adam Clarke’s commentary, working from the Greek text without any reliance on the Restoration, acknowledges that Paul’s language in the original Greek identifies the “second Adam” as the same being as the earthly first Adam, yet in a new divine and heavenly status, distinct from His earlier status.6

“Son of Man” Means “Son of Adam”

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus refers to Himself as “the Son of Man.” But in Hebrew, the word adam means “man.” Thus “Son of Man” is literally “Son of Adam.” This identification is not merely a Latter-day Saint reading; it is defended at length in mainstream biblical scholarship.7 The title Son of Adam applies, in different respects, to both the Father (who is the resurrected Adam, the source of the human family) and to the Son (who is Adam’s spirit son and earthly descendant through Mary). The Name-Title System running through Hebrew scripture is the key: divine titles are inherited across the divine family hierarchy, with context indicating which person is meant. (See also Mark 2:27–28 on the Sabbath and the Son of Man, where Jesus’s reasoning presupposes Adam’s unique relation to the Sabbath as Lord and Father of all who keep it.)

Acts 17:28–29 — We Are His Offspring

When Paul preached to the Athenians, he declared a truth that mainstream Christianity has largely forgotten:

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.”
— Acts 17:28–29 (KJV)

“We are the offspring of God” is not metaphor — it is literal truth. We are the spirit children of exalted parents. And if God is our Father in the most literal sense, then He must be a being who can procreate — a personage with a tangible body, not a formless essence.8

Moses 6:59 — Adam Born Into the World

The Book of Moses, revealed to Joseph Smith and preserved in the Pearl of Great Price, contains the key statement that Adam was not fashioned as a literal clay figure from the soil of this earth, but was “born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit” just as we are:

“That by reason of transgression cometh the fall, which fall bringeth death, and inasmuch as ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul, even so ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven, of water, and of the Spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine Only Begotten; that ye might be sanctified from all sin, and enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come, even immortal glory.”
— Moses 6:59 (Pearl of Great Price)

This passage, addressed to Adam, makes plain that He came into mortality through the same process by which His children come into mortality — He was formed from the elements — the “dust” of an earth — through embodied birth, not as a mythical clay golem. The implication, drawn out at length by Fred C. Collier in Adam-God in the Bible, is that Father Adam came to this earth from another estate, in the manner Moses describes, having already completed His prior probations.

Joseph Smith and the Same Doctrine

The detailed Joseph Smith witness can be found on the Adam-God page, where the Prophet’s statements are treated in their doctrinal setting. In brief: Joseph identified Adam as Michael and the Ancient of Days, located Adam-ondi-Ahman by revelation, taught that Adam’s fall was not moral sin, connected the name Ahman with the first man and first God, and taught in the King Follett and June 16, 1844 discourses that God the Father had passed through mortality before becoming God.

Nature-of-Deity evidence therefore does not stand alone. The Hebrew and ancient witnesses surveyed here converge with Joseph Smith’s own teachings and with President Young’s later public proclamation. The ancient and scriptural case converges with the full doctrinal exposition on Adam-God.

But What About…? Common Questions

Q: Doesn’t this contradict modern LDS teachings?

A: It contradicts the position the modern Church adopted after the doctrine was set aside in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — but it is consistent with what was openly taught by President Brigham Young, by his Counselors, and by other early Apostles. The Restored Gospel as given to Joseph Smith and continued under President Young is the Gospel of God the Father (the Doctrine of Exaltation), distinct from the Gospel of the Son (the Doctrine of Salvation) which the Gentile Church receives. The position of the Church of the Firstborn is that the Gentile Church fell into apostasy with respect to the Doctrine of Exaltation, particularly through the abandonment of plural marriage in 1890 and the subsequent abandonment of the Adam-God doctrine and the Lecture at the Veil. (See the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Firstborn, including Article 14 on Adam-God.)

Q: Why would God’s identity be hidden?

A: The scriptures teach that sacred knowledge is given only to those who seek it diligently. Additionally, later scribes and reformers gradually edited the Old Testament over time, removing references to the Divine Mother and obscuring the identity of El. The corruption began as far back as the apostasy of Israel in the days of Moses, and was completed by the later period of Israelite and Jewish scribal reform. The truth was not lost because God hid it — it was lost because men rejected it.

Q: If Adam is God, why does He bow to Yahovah in scripture?

A: This question rests on a conflation that the Restoration corrects. There are two distinct Trinities: the Creation Trinity (Elohim, Yahovah, and Michael — three persons in the divine genealogy who organized this world, with Elohim as great-grandfather, Yahovah as Michael’s Father, and Michael as the one who descended to become Adam) and the Godhead Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — three persons who administer to us in this dispensation, with Adam Himself as the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son, and Joseph Smith as the Holy Ghost, the third personage). When scripture shows a divine being acting under Yahovah’s direction or speaking to Yahovah, the context indicates whether Yahovah refers to Michael’s Father (in the Creation-Trinity sense), or to Christ (when the Son bears the Father’s name by delegation, per Exodus 23:21), or even to Adam Himself (when the Name-Title System assigns the title to the present Father). The full framework can be found on the Two Trinities page.

Q: Does this mean we worship Adam instead of Jesus?

A: President Brigham Young’s own words answer this question directly: “Adam is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.” (Journal of Discourses 1:50.) We worship the Father — and the Father is Adam, the resurrected and exalted being who made and organized this world and whose children we are. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, our Redeemer and Mediator, and Joseph Smith as the Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. The revelation of the Father’s identity does not change the persons of the Godhead Trinity — it tells us who the Father actually is. (See the Adam-God page for the full doctrine; the role of the Son in leading His brothers and sisters home to the Father is treated at length in The Gospel of the Father.)

An Invitation to Study

The identity of God the Father is not a peripheral question. It is central to understanding the Plan of Salvation, the office of the Patriarchs, and the meaning of Eternal Life. If the Father has walked the path we walk, then we can trust that the path leads somewhere real — to glorified, embodied, exalted personhood in a Celestial Family.

These ancient truths invite us to look again at the scriptures we thought we knew — and to see the Father’s signature everywhere: in the Hebrew divine name, in the testimonies of the Apostles, and in the teachings of the Patriarchs and Prophets ancient and modern.

Further Study: Fred C. Collier’s Publications

For those who wish to explore these doctrines in depth, the following works are essential reading:

On the Identity of El (Father Adam) and the Hebrew Witness

  • New Light on the Ancient Hebrew/Christian Doctrine on Deity, Part 1 (1991) — A study of ancient witnesses to the Father’s identity as El, drawing from Ugaritic texts, biblical testimony, the Septuagint, New Testament “Son of Man” language, Dead Sea Scrolls material, Restoration scripture, and early Latter-day Saint teachings to illuminate the Adam-God doctrine.
  • The Demise of the Hebrew Goddess (1991) — Traces the worship of El and Asherah (Father and Mother) in ancient Israel; documents how the Divine Mother was gradually edited out of scripture, beginning with the apostasy of Israel under Moses and culminating in the Deuteronomic reform.

On Father and Son in the Old Testament

  • The Father and the Son — The Two Gods of the Old Testament (1995) — Both Father and Son bear the name Yahweh; the Father by inherent right, the Son by delegation (Exodus 23:21). Clarifies the pre-existent role of Jesus Christ as the God of Israel after God the Father stopped dealing with that nation directly. Settles, for any who will receive it, how and why Christ the Son is identified at times as Yahweh in scripture, notwithstanding that the title applies to both the Father and the Son.
  • Adam-God in the Bible (originally 1978; revised editions through 2014) — Biblical evidence (1 Corinthians 15:47; Acts 17:28–29; the meaning of “Son of Man”) together with corroborating Restoration scripture from the Pearl of Great Price (notably Moses 6:59 on Adam’s being “born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit”).

On the Adam-God Doctrine and the Theology of the Father

  • Answers to Contradictions in the Adam-God Doctrine (1992) — The Stereotyped Pattern by which all Gods follow the same path; resolves apparent contradictions in President Young’s teachings.
  • The Trinity and the Holy Spirits — The doctrine of the Godhead as Joseph Smith taught it; the identity of Joseph Smith as the Holy Ghost; the presiding relationship between the Holy Ghost and other Holy Spirits; and the harmonization of Joseph Smith’s early and late teachings regarding God and Spirit.
  • The Gospel of the Father — A comprehensive compilation of President Brigham Young’s teachings on the Doctrine of Exaltation: the Gospel of the Father as distinct from the Gospel of the Son, the empathy argument that a God who has not Himself walked the mortal path cannot save those who do, and the Priesthood and family structure of the Celestial Kingdom.
  • President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity (1999) — The author’s preface (XIV–XV) says the work sets forth “the whole body of President Young’s teachings … organized topically, starting with fundamental concepts and after laying a proper foundation, gradually working into the deeper doctrine, just as President Young would likely have done, had he taken the time to compose his teachings into a book.” Includes Appendix C (chronological catalog of the principal recorded discourses on Adam-God) and Appendix D (corroborative testimony from President Young’s associates in the Priesthood), with a system of footnotes referencing each statement to its original source and cross-references to more than a thousand passages of scripture.

These publications are available through the Church of the Firstborn and preserve the doctrinal heritage taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith and President Brigham Young. The full doctrinal exposition of Adam-God is on the Adam-God page; the Two Trinities framework, on the Two Trinities page; and the witness for our Mother in Heaven, on the Heavenly Mother page.

Notes

  1. The duration of Asherah’s presence in the Jerusalem Temple has been variously calculated by biblical scholars. Raphael Patai, in The Hebrew Goddess (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1967), 38–39, computes 236 years out of 370 by combining the regnal data of the kings of Judah; Fred C. Collier reproduces this calculation in The Demise of the Hebrew Goddess. The underlying biblical-chronology questions are debated; what is undisputed is that the Asherah stood in Solomon’s Temple for the majority of its existence, was removed by reforming kings on at least two occasions, and was definitively removed only at the Deuteronomic reform under Josiah (621 B.C.). ↩
  2. Fred C. Collier, The Demise of the Hebrew Goddess: “It was not until the apostasy of Israel, during their sojourn with Moses in the wilderness, that the Fulness of this Gospel was first taken from the Earth.” The Golden Calf episode (Exodus 32) is the iconic moment of this apostasy, but the apostasy was the broader pattern of the camp’s rebellion, of which the Golden Calf was the symbolic center. The fuller corruption of true worship in subsequent centuries is laid out in the same essay. ↩
  3. The Hebrew etymology of El Shaddai is debated among scholars and variously rendered; common proposals include the traditional “God Almighty” and “God of the Mountain.” The point here is not the precise philological derivation but the Patriarchal-period covenantal use of the name in connection with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. ↩
  4. The doctrine of Divine Investiture — that the Son acts in the Father’s name and bears the Father’s authority — is recognized in mainstream Latter-day Saint teaching as the resolution to passages where the Son speaks as the Father in the first person. Fred C. Collier extends the principle through Exodus 23:21 (“my name is in him”) and the larger Hebrew Name-Title System; see The Father and the Son for the full development. ↩
  5. The transition is discussed at length in The Father and the Son — The Two Gods of the Old Testament; the principle is that after the apostasy of the camp of Israel under Moses (the Golden Calf episode and its aftermath), the Father withdrew direct dealings and the Son thereafter administered to Israel in His Father’s name. ↩
  6. Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible … with a Commentary and Critical Notes, Vol. VI (1832), commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:45–47. Clarke acknowledges that Paul’s language in the original Greek identifies the “second Adam” as the same being as the earthly first Adam, yet in a new divine and heavenly status, distinct from His earlier status. Clarke does not draw the Latter-day Saint conclusion, but his grammatical observation is a useful independent confirmation. ↩
  7. The mainstream scholarly defense of “Son of Man = Son of Adam” is given most fully in Joel Marcus, “Son of Man as Son of Adam,” Revue Biblique 110, no. 1 (2003): 38–61, and 110, no. 3 (2003): 370–386 (JSTOR 44090738; JSTOR 44090750). The earlier and influential treatment by Frederick H. Borsch, The Son of Man in Myth and History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), connecting the title to ancient Near Eastern royal-Adamic traditions, was already cited by Fred C. Collier in his own work. See also Mark 2:27–28, where the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. ↩
  8. Paul’s “your own poets have said” in Acts 17:28 is generally identified by classical scholars as a quotation from the third-century B.C. Greek poet Aratus of Soli, Phaenomena, line 5: “For we are also his offspring,” in the original context referring to humanity as descendants of Zeus. Paul’s appropriation of the line in addressing the Athenians treats the Greek poetic tradition as preserving, however dimly, the truth that humans are literal offspring of a divine progenitor — a truth the Restoration recovers fully. ↩